THIS week has seen yet another disaster in the kitchen of Hill Towers. I frequently lose unequal struggles on this battleground, most often if my foe is something important, like Yorkshire pudding when there’s a hungry horde waiting for the piece de resistance. Sometimes it’s a cake that’s meant to sit up proudly and be noticed on a cake stall doily but which I end up buying back and feeding to the family and the ducks before its flying-saucer appearance humiliates me in public.
There has always been one safe bet, though, and that’s bread. Bread and I go back a long way. I have been an accomplished baker for a good 30 years and at one stage in my life it was a skill for which I actually won prizes. Well, only two prizes to be precise – a second and a third – but my wholemeal loaves were appreciated by the family as well as the judges in the village hall, and that was what mattered.
In recent years my bread-making has rather tailed off, partly through lack of time but mostly because, with the children gone and Geoff and I trying hard not to eat for Britain, it seemed a good idea to stem the supply.
Shopkeeper’s bread, as we have always quaintly referred to it, was occasionally bought when we felt we needed a fix. Then I started worrying about what we were ingesting, what with preservatives and over-processed flour even in lyrically named ‘farmhouse’ loaves.
I decided that if we were to eat the odd slice it ought to be home-made, so that I could use organic flour, but I would resume production using a bread-making machine. This was quite a departure for me, the great bread snob, who finds it difficult to understand how anything can be any good if I haven’t suffered in the making of it.
The first three or four machine-made loaves were excellent. This was easy, especially as the ‘rapid bake’ facility meant a loaf could be produced in about an hour, suiting my spontaneous (in truth, disorganised) catering habits.
Then, in quick succession, my sister-in-law, my son, and my sister each acquired a bread machine. All pronounced themselves thrilled with the results and we exchanged notes on who was baking what.
This was where I found that I, the clever clogs with an illustrious past as a bread-maker, was the odd one out. While I had not experimented beyond the occasional rapid-bake quickie, they were all turning out exotic things like teabreads and foccacias, sumptuous great wholemeal and granary loaves, pizza dough and baguettes.
Not to be outdone, this week I tackled my first effort that was not over and done with in an hour. This meant anticipating when bread would be needed and starting the process the night before. What excitement!
What a disaster. Don’t tell anyone, but the machine produced a miserable brown brick with a crust so rock-like that I had to chisel my way in. True, it was delicious, making up for in taste what it spectacularly lacked in height and consistency, but it didn’t deserve a space in the bread bin.
I can only conclude from this miserable exercise that my machine and I are not in harmony. Perhaps I can find a baker to give us both some yeast therapy or dough counselling.
Leave a Reply